Lonely Managers at the Top

Power is coveted, sought, and tightly held onto. From the animal kingdom to all human societies, power is the currency of success.

Those in power are less likely to reciprocate because they tend to believe that the favors they have received were selfishly motivated. However, the very nature of power and its psychological effects often leave the powerful feeling lonely at the top. We list five ways in which power perverts, contorts and undermines a number of psychological processes that normally nurture close connections and form the foundation of healthy relationships. 1. Power alters our beliefs about others generosity. When people do nice things for us, we automatically devise an explanation for their behavior: Why did they go out of their way to help me? What is their motivation? Often this process is so quick and automatic that we dont even realize we are doing it, but despite its subtlety, it has dramatic implications for how our relationships develop and how close or connected to others we remain. Typically, our theories for why people do nice things for us reflect well on the giver and portend good things for the relationship. We often think: Because this person really likes and cares about me. Because this is a kind and trustworthy person. Thus, we often see others through a beneficent lens. However, ones own power represents a compelling alternative explanation for what appears to be another persons generosity.

When individuals have power, they know they are more likely to be the target of opportunists, who use kind words and seemingly selfless acts not for altruistic reasons but to further their own selfish goals. It is this alternative explanation that always exists for the powerful and leads them to become more suspicious of others seemingly generous acts. Of course this jaundiced view of others intentions can be functionalwho wants to develop a relationship with a selfish sycophant?but those in power often over-apply this principle and become more suspicious of any kind acts they are offered, irrespective of the source. In one study, we asked people to recall the most recent favor they had received and who had done it for them. Most people wrote about favors from friends or family, such as a ride to the airport or taking care of a child. Importantly, there were no systematic power dynamics described in these descriptions. Then we randomly assigned half the participants to complete an exercise that would make them feel powerful and half to complete a neutral exercise. When we then asked everyone to think back to the favor they had described earlier and report why they thought the favor-giver had acted thus, we found that feelings of power dramatically altered reactions to the favor. Simply making people feel powerful made them more likely to report that the favor had been selfishly motivated. Those in power saw, for example, a friends favor through a cynical lens, as being driven by more opportunistic and conniving intentions. 2. Power affects our responses to the kind acts of others. Our beliefs about the motivations behind the actions of others ultimately drive disconnection because they inform our responses to gestures. One of the most basic and critical responses to others generosity is to reciprocate with generous gestures of our own. Reciprocity, the social norm that people should do unto others as others have done to them, has been identified as a key component of relationships from Roman times by the philosopher Cicero to more recently by sociologists such as Alvin Gouldner and even of a stable society, because it creates social equilibrium and cohesion. However, we only reciprocate favors that we think were done for our benefit and not for the favor-givers ulterior motives. For example, if a work colleague stays late to help you out on a joint project that was important to her own success, you will feel less compelled to reciprocate than if that colleague had stayed late to help on a project she wasnt part of and thus wouldnt personally benefit from the projects success. Those in power are less likely to reciprocate because they tend to believe that the favors they have received were selfishly motivated. If we return to the work example, and add our knowledge from point 1 above, then we may begin to see how the powerful can become the architects of their own loneliness. Lets say a colleague stays at work late to help you on a project that shes not associated with. She saw you could use some help and offered to stay a few extra hours. Our findings suggest that even if this persons motivation in doing the favor is completely benevolent, only driven by true generosity this persons hierarchical position in the organization relative to

you will affect your response. If this person is junior to you in the organization, you will be less likely to reciprocate than if this person were a peer. This lack of reciprocity means that if a similar situation emerged sometime later you would be less likely to help this junior person in a similar situation. Why? Because of the cynical attributions that power inspires. Your power over the junior person makes you more likely to believe she did the initial favor for selfish reasons and therefore is less deserving of reciprocity. Moreover, by failing to reciprocate the favor, you will be keeping distance between yourself and your more junior co-workers. 3. Power reduces trust It has been said that love makes the world go around, but when we speak of the quality of our relationships with others, it may be more accurate to say that it is really trust that is the engine of effective social relationships. When we trust someone, we believe that the person will act in our best interest, even when we are not there to monitor their behavior. At work, interpersonal trust can be hugely beneficial, not only because it feels better to work with people you trust, but also because it saves time and effort. For example, if you trust that your co-workers are not working on their own agenda and to your disadvantage, you dont need to obsessively attend to their communications with others. Trust doesnt just happen though; it develops. By exchanging small vulnerabilities back and fortha favor received, an embarrassing disclosure revealedtwo individuals build a relationship characterized by ever greater trust. Power puts a wrench in that process by creating a reason to mistrust others kind acts. The powerful generate cynical attributions for others kind deeds and fail to reciprocate with actions that display their own vulnerability, thereby stunting the possibility for a trusting relationship to develop. 4. Power reduces commitment. The word commitment, as it applies to interpersonal relationships, generally brings to mind images of romantic attachment. To demonstrate that our theory affects not only work interactions, but also personal relationships, we looked at how power may create loneliness in marriages. We asked married individuals to think about a specific favor that their spouse had done for them, to answer why they thought the spouse had done the favor, and then to report how committed they were to the relationship. At the end of the study, each married participant indicated who earned more income: the respondent, the spouse or about the same. Income has been cited across many literatures as a source of power, both inside and outside marriages. Indeed, we found that spouses who earn more felt more powerful in their marriages compared to those who earned the same or less than their spouse. Consistent with our theory, participants who earned more than their spouse, and thus had more power in the relationship, were more suspicious of their spouses motives in offering the favor.

Remarkably these cynical attributions, which appear to be part and parcel of having power, led the high income earners to feel less committed to their marriage relationship. Thus, the very state of being powerful causes individuals to feel less connected to others, even to ones own spouse. 5. Power damages relationships in the very moments when they have the greatest potential to develop. The dynamics we have outlined above present the possibility that powerful people are just generally suspicious of others. Whether instrumental or beneficent, those who interact with power-holders will be perceived as having more suspect motives. Interestingly, this doesnt appear to be the case. In one study, we asked participants about a peer or a subordinate who had either done a favor for the participant or just done required work. It turned out that participants trusted subordinates less than equal-powered peers only after receiving a favor, but not after receiving required work. These results mean that those in power are not necessarily walking around every day feeling suspicious of their colleagues. Rather, it is in the very moment that someone tries to establish closeness through generous acts and unsolicited favors that power gets in the way. Overall, power weaves a jaundiced and cynical psychological web. In the face of favors, the powerful see selfishness, refuse to reciprocate, strangle trust, and ultimately feel less committed. It is these psychological and social processes that leave the powerful sitting ever more alone at the top. What can you do about this? Many of these psychological processes occur outside of conscious awareness and it can be difficult to reign in. However, one potential step is to increase awareness of the different spheres and roles you take on in your lifemanager, colleague, parent or friendand the different psychological states you inhabit in each. Instead of instinctively and unconsciously drawing cynical explanations, take a step back and try and to truly discern where the generosity came from. Look for patterns in this persons behaviorare they generally generous or do they only help me just before the want something from me? By bringing more conscious awareness to the situation, individuals have greater capacity to differentiate the generous from the sycophantic. It is also important to note that favors motivated by selfish intentions are not necessarily to your disadvantage in the short term. So while you still may want to exercise caution in exposing your own vulnerabilities to such favor-givers, reminding yourself to say thank you and showing your appreciation in small ways can do wonders to create a more positive working relationship. Another key solution is to avoid carrying feelings of power from one context into another in which ones power is less relevant.

We know whenever people feel powerful, even in the absence of actual power they demonstrate greater suspicion of the favors of others. Therefore, a conference call from home with a subordinate, in which power is relevant, may affect your behavior with your children or your spouse just after you hang up. Create cues that remind you to shake off one role and engage in the mindset appropriate to the current context. A brief pause to remind yourself of this process, or thinking of a memory with your children or spouse, can often do the trick. Awareness of this psychological lens that power provides can be the key to feeling socially connected without leaving oneself overly exposed to selfish sycophants. By doing so, the powerful can sit at the top, neither lonely nor vulnerable. The authors of this WSJ article are: M. Ena Inesi of London Business school and Adam D. Galinsky of Kellogg Graduate School of Business, Northwestern University and is based on an academic paper by M. Ena Inesi, Deborah H Gruenfeld (Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Adam D. Galinsky. This is the latest article in The Sources management series.